Jim Gray isn’t very interested in talking about his famous friends, it seems.
The longtime sportscaster has made news over the years for wide-ranging reasons, but his most recent claim to fame is for being the man who interviews Tom Brady every week during Westwood One’s “Monday Night Football” radio broadcasts.
Gray and Brady clearly are good friends and their rapport — while sometimes a little too lovey-dovey — often allows them to reveal some interesting tidbits about the New England Patriots quarterback. When Brady sat down with Oprah Winfrey last year for an in-depth interview, Gray actually could be seen off the “stage” alongside Brady’s wife, Gisele Bundchen, and others.
It certainly made for an odd cast of characters, so when 98.5 The Sports Hub’s “Toucher and Rich” had Gray on for an interview Friday on Radio Row at Super Bowl LIII, hosts Fred Toucher and Rich Shertenlieb asked him about his appearance at the Oprah interview.
It seemingly was a harmless question (without a whole lot of meaning, either), but it led to an awkward and borderline uncomfortable back and forth that eventually led to Toucher ending the interview very abruptly.
Here’s where it got especially tense:
RS: You seem to be very secretive about this.
JG: Why would my dinner plans be of any interest to anyone? I was invited to dinner (by) Oprah, so I went to dinner.
FT: Because Oprah’s famous, and Tom Brady was filming something and you happened to be there. Those are two famous people and then there’s Jim Gray.
JG: Well, I know Tom, Oprah knows Tom, Steadman knows Tom, Oprah knows my wife, we’re all friends, so why not have a dinner? So that’s what that was?
RS: So you got there really early for dinner.
JG: Perhaps they ran late.
RS: You’re very secretive.
JG: I don’t know what, get to the end point.
FT: Don’t worry about it. You don’t want to be here.
JG: That’s what you wanted?
FT: No, you just won’t answer any questions. It’s boring. You’re being defensive and looking at me weird.
JG: That’s a stupid question. That’s a stupid question, ‘What were you doing having dinner with somebody?’
RS: We didn’t know you were having dinner —
JG: I just told you, and (Toucher) didn’t like the answer.
FT: Ah, Jesus, Jim. Just go. Do whatever you have to do. Bye. Here’s the headlines.
JG: Good luck to you.
After the interview, Gray apparently told Toucher and Shertenlieb they had a s— reputation, which is something that had he said it on air, would have really made things interesting.
We’ll just go ahead and chalk this up to people being a little irritable after a long week of work. Or something like that.
